Ev Williams (via Hacker News):
Next month will be the tenth anniversary of the launch of Medium. As we gear up for the next decade, I’ve decided to hand over the CEO reins.
Casey Newton:
As I wrote at the time, by some measures Medium was succeeding. It had started 2021 with around 700,000 paid subscriptions, and was on track for more than $35 million in revenue from its $5 monthly subscription offering. At the same time, internal data showed that it largely was not high-quality journalism that was leading readers to subscribe: it was random stories posted to the platform by independent writers that happened to get featured by the Google or Facebook algorithms.
[…]
Nieman Lab’s Laura Hazard Owen wrote an essential guide to Williams’ whipsawing in 2019. Among the things Medium tried during his tenure, from its launch to the present day[…]
[…]
On the high end, well funded digital publishers from BuzzFeed to Vice to the Atlantic excelled at publishing high-quality journalism. And on the low end, Substack emerged to let solo creators develop thriving, sustainable careers by offering individual subscriptions. […] In such a world, Medium had no obvious advantage. With its owned and operated publications gone, it became a general-interest web magazine staffed by freelancers and dependent on Google.
M.G. Siegler:
In fact, in many ways, that would be my critique of Medium on the front-end. It has gone from utter elegance through to various stages of clutter and buttons to get people to sign up or download the app, etc. I just want people to be able to read without anything but the words in front of them.
But few people know that better than Coach Tony who is maybe the Medium power user since the get-go. And now he gets the run the joint. So that’s exciting. Just don’t ruin this beautiful writing canvas.
Previously:
Business Medium Substack The Media Web
Juli Clover:
Apple today submitted its final filing in the ongoing Apple v. Epic legal battle, which is playing out in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Both Apple and Epic Games chose to appeal the original ruling as neither company was satisfied with the outcome.
The appeal battle has been ongoing since January, but it is wrapping up with Apple’s cross-appeal brief, which follows Epic’s opening brief, Apple’s own opening brief, and Epic’s cross-appeal brief.
[…]
Apple goes on to point out that Epic Games in fact no longer meets the legal requirement of “standing” because it is not an iOS developer and cannot be impacted by a Guideline that applies to iOS developers.
They can take away your standing simply by terminating your developer account?
Previously:
Antitrust Apple Epic Games Fortnite iOS iOS 15 Lawsuit Legal
The App Association:
The App Association gives a voice to small technology companies. Our mission is to help members promote an environment that inspires and rewards innovation while providing resources to help them raise capital, create jobs, and continue creating incredible technology.
Florian Mueller:
From time to time it’s unfortunately necessary to expose astroturfers.
[…]
A few months ago I had a conversation with a policy officer of one of the other large corporations supporting ACT. By now it seems it really is mostly Apple who’s footing the bill and setting the agenda, but they’re not alone (yet). When ACT came up, I criticized that company for supporting an organization that claims to speak on small app developers’ behalf while actually working against them (and for Apple). The excuse was this: "But in the SEP policy debate we are faced with all those professors who are funded by Qualcomm."
The Competitiveness Coalition:
Fundamentally, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act is a dangerous piece of legislation that will do nothing to drive down costs for Americans and rather help Communist China’s quest for global dominance.
[…]
The Competitiveness Coalition is dedicated to spotlighting how American tech drives our economy and supports our competitive edge. We are building a campaign-style infrastructure using a combination of earned, paid and digital media, as well as grassroots and grasstops advocacy, and corresponding government relations activity.
Emily Birnbaum (tweet):
A group fighting antitrust legislation targeting the biggest US tech companies presents itself as a grassroots advocate for American taxpayers, yet it hasn’t disclosed a significant source of funding from one of the industry’s giants: Amazon.com Inc.
[…]
Amazon’s public policy shop believed the Competitiveness Coalition could serve as a counterweight to the Chamber of Progress, a left-leaning tech association it also funds led by former Google executive Adam Kovacevich, according to the people. While the Chamber of Progress provides a pro-tech voice on the left, some Amazon public policy officials determined that they needed a similar group on the right.
Previously:
Update (2022-07-19): Nick Heer:
This is not so different from the language used by Facebook’s front group, American Edge, which claims antitrust regulation will “ultimately hand victory to China”.
Update (2022-09-03): Florian Mueller (Hacker News):
Not only Ericsson--the complainant in three parallel ITC investigations--but also the ITC staff brought motions to compel because Apple refused to provide information on its funding of ACT.
[…]
Let me show you the documents because it’s really interesting to see how evasive Apple and its astroturfers are. I believe that would come out is essentially that ACT is a lobbying contractor, like an extension of Apple’s lobbying department. And again, that would have implications not only in the SEP context but even more so with respect to mobile app stores. For instance, next month the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit will hear Epic Games’ appeal, and ACT is one of Apple’s amici.
Update (2022-09-09): Florian Mueller:
The best thing to do would simply be to defund ACT. I really wonder why the decision makers in Cupertino believe they’re actually getting value out of ACT, unless offending app developers (by falsely speaking in our name) has value in and of itself. Policy makers in D.C. and Brussels largely know already that ACT is not the App Association, but the Apple Association. ACT’s claims--such as that small app developers face SEP licensing problems--often don’t withstand scrutiny.
But as long as Apple uses ACT as a tool, it must answer questions--at least the U.S. government’s legitimate questions.
Amazon Antitrust Apple Business Legal Patents
Martin Maly (via Hacker News):
Of course, it was “opened” a long time before, but with an unclear clause, mentioning “Unofficial CP/M Web Site” as a licensed place.
The discussion is not over yet, but we believe this statement is equivalent to the well-known BSD or MIT licenses.
See also: Digital Research Source Code.
CP/M History Open Source Programming
